Pokemon producer Shigeki Morimoto claims that the initial entries in the series nearly entirely omitted multiplayer combat. Yeah shocking right?
That information comes from a 1996 Japanese Pokedex book, which was recently translated by Did You Know Gaming. Morimoto said that multiplayer fights “would be a hassle to develop.” Furthermore, Game Freak was running out of time. Nintendo, on the other hand, virtually asked that the functionality be added.
What happened to multiplayer battles?
Even after Nintendo’s demands, combat were initially intended to be simple, since they would be something people observed rather than participating. However, based on comments received throughout development, that notion was deemed “boring.” Eventually, Game Freak included standard fights via the Game Boy Link Cable.
“President Tajiri had wanted us to implement combat for a long time, but I didn’t find the concept very appealing and believed it would be difficult to program.” We thought we’d run out of time and would have to abandon the combat aspect, but Nintendo said unequivocally that they needed fights in the game, so we had to make it happen.
So I simply thought, ‘Well, there’s no alternative, it has to be done,’ and the early conflicts were just something you observed. You’d just notice that there was a war and who won and who lost. We presented it to Nintendo, and the responses we received were ‘boring.’ I suppose they were correct, but we were racing against the clock to include combat that the user could direct. Finally, it was what everyone desired, so we made it work using the Link Cable and made it a reality.”
Pokemon Red and Green first appeared in Japan in February 1996, with Blue following a few months later. In 1998, Red and Blue made their western debuts. Yellow followed in September of 1998.
